Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ya'll! It's been a crazy few weeks! I spent a week in California with my ENTIRE family and we spent three days at Disneyland. It was SUCH a great time and we made a lot of precious memories. (Also, Bryan and I rode Incredicoaster four times in a row...we had booked fastpasses for everyone...then they all left to take naps...so we didn't want to waste them!) When we got back, I realized there was only a week until Christmas, so I've spent the last week buying gifts and getting ready for THAT (and actually spent a decent amount of time sewing...but more on that later ;) Then we started Seussical rehearsals and things have been a LITTLE crazy.
When we last left off, I had just finished Belle's blue village corset vest. I was SUPER pleased with the way it turned out, but I still had to create the rest of her blue ensemble! (Note: this is not the actual order I made everything in...but we'll visit this now anyway because it makes more sense. I had SO many things to make and not everything was finished before I started something new. I had to take breaks from *certain* pieces so I didn't stab myself in the brain.)
Today we will take a look at Belle's blue skirt and apron. (I forgot to take very many in-progress photos of this skirt, so...oh well.) Again, I was modeling my look after the newest tour version of the show, but this was a pretty simple and modest piece, compared to the vest. Since the vest had a pretty vibrant pattern, I wanted a more muted fabric for the skirt. I was hoping to find something similar to my inspiration fabric, which was kind of like a soft blue with a muted pinstripe...but unfortunately even after searching every fabric store in the valley, I couldn't find anything like that. So I ended up choosing a a bright-ish solid blue cotton quilting fabric. (I needed this thing to be sturdy but still flow well. I was anticipating lots of spinning.)
For this piece I decided to do a simple circle skirt. A circle skirt is basically just a large circle with a smaller circle cut for the size of your waist. Depending on the width of your fabric and the length you want the skirt, you can cut it in two half-circle panels, or four quarter-circle panels. As this was to be a shorter skirt (just below the knee), I was able to do two half-panels for the front and back. I would attach them to each other at the sides and then fasten them to a waistband. I planned on doing a simple zipper and hook and eye fastener at the back. This was the most sturdy and secure way to make sure everything stayed fastened but it was still relatively quick to get in and out of. (EVERY COSTUME CHANGE WAS FAST.)
If I remember right, I was able to cut both panels from my folded fabric. (Most fabric comes folded length-wise, that way you can cut mirror-image pattern pieces). I folded it in half again width-wise so that I could just cut a quarter-circle and then unfold it. I measured my waist (the circumference of the inner circle) and calculated the radius of my waist (the additional length I'd need to cut - for example a 30.5 inch waist plus a half inch seam allowance creates a 31" circumference or a 4.93" radius - I think I gave myself an extra inch to be safe (MATH!) I could always cut more off, but this fabric wasn't super cheap so I didn't want to waste it. But I also knew I would add a ruffle at the bottom, so if it was a little short that was ok.
I used a measuring tape to create my quarter-circle (Basically held on end on the corner and dragged the other end around and pinned a bunch of dots to create a cutting line. I cut out my folded quarter circles and then cut a smaller circle for my waist. (I had planned on creating the waist a little big so I could put some pleats in it and give it even more volume. I LOVE the way a spinny skirt looks.)
Once I had my panels cut out, I sewed them together at the sides. Since I don't own a serger I did kind of a modified seam. Since this skirt would only be one layer and I didn't want the raw seams to show, I first sewed the wrong sides together to create one seam, then turned it inside out and tucked the seams inside themselves to create a second, hidden seam. Then I pressed the sides and everything looked...well seamless ;)
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| Pretend this is blue....(I made the pink one the same way....) |
I created my waistband next. This was a simple folded rectangle. I knew it could easily be wrapped around itself so it didn't matter if it was too long. I wanted it to be a decently thick waistband so I could make sure there was no weird waist gap when I raised my arms...I hate that! I think I measured about a 3 inch wide waistband (which I doubled so I could fold in half. I ironed more interfacing on one half -- this would help the fabric not to wrinkle even if it was pulled pretty snug to my waist. Then I folded in the ends and pressed so I didn't have raw edges hanging out, then I folded the entire thing in half, length-wise. The nice folded edge would be the top that would sit against my skin, and I would sew the skirt panels into the bottom edge.
Even though I hadn't exactly decided how I'd do the apron, I knew it would sit on top of the skirt (not in the waistband), so I went ahead and sewed the skirt panels to the waistband. I put a few pleats to make it the same size as my waist, but left the back open as I knew I'd have to size a zipper and leave room for a seam allowance there.
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| THIS SEAM IS SEWN BY HAND. BE IMPRESSED. (It's super not professional at all.) |
Since I didn't want to finish the waistband right then (I think I still had to buy a zipper), I decided to start the ruffle on the bottom. Ruffles are annoying (we will revisit later when making giant gold-dress ruffles...) because you have to make them like three times as long as the actual length because they will be gathered. Now, I HATE making circle hems. They are literally horrible because a circle doesn't fold in cleanly and every time I've ever made one it looked like crap. THUS A RECTANGLE RUFFLE. I just cut several long strips of fabric and folded in half length-wise. This created a nice edge at the bottom that I wouldn't have to finish. I had to cut several strips and sew them together to get enough length to do the entire bottom of the skirt (a 6 inch waist-radius plus, say, 24" for the length creates a bottom circumference of 188 inches! So...that's a lot of gathering.
Gathering is fun because hey, if your thread breaks you have to start over. I DO have a ruffle foot on my sewing machine (I think) but it wasn't working the way I needed it too. So I sewed two long basting stitches on the top edges and just pulled to gather. I basically kept adding strips until I had enough. Then my thread broke and I was super annoyed, so eventually I just kept folding tiny pleats into the seams and pinning and it looked almost the same, so I didn't care.
Also, I had seen in some photos that it looked like they had used white piping between the skirt and the ruffle. I thought this looked pretty so I decided to do the same -- I'd later add white lace on the very bottom edge to finish it. I layered my ruffle with the top edge meeting the bottom hem of the skirt, right sides together. This way I would fold the ruffle down and I could finish the ugly seams on the inside and nobody would see. I had to buy two packs of piping because it had to be so long...but eventually I got everything pinned and stitched -- yay! Now it was time to finish this raw edge on the bottom.
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| Lace! |
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| Piping looks so pretty! |
I think by this time we had actually started music rehearsals for the show; and surprisingly, Belle doesn't actually sing in most of the ensemble songs. So I had a lot of downtime. Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I hand sewed the raw edges of the ruffle underneath. Essentially I just folded the edge of the skirt over itself and the other edges and tucked it under, kind of wrapping all the raw edges in to it, and I hand stitched it in place. It wouldn't show, so I really didn't care if it looked flawless, but I still didn't want raw edges hanging out where they might unravel, so at least this would keep everything in place. This took several days to finish, since I had down time but not TONS of down time.
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| Zippers are fun. |
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| Clasps are fun too! |
Last item was to finish the waist. I bought a 12 inch blue zipper (no need for a separating zipper this time.) But i needed it to be long enough so I could just unzip all the way and easily pull everything off and on in the midst of quick without risking ripping everything. This later proved helpful... I cut a seam down the back (since I only had two half-circle panels which met on the sides, there was no built-in seam already in the back.) folded the back edges over themselves twice to create a clean seam and then just sewed those to the zipper. I tucked the top edges into the waistband and finished the edges of that as well (basically just folded them inside themselves and sewed along the edge to seal it). Last item to finish this thing up was adding some hook-and-eye clasps. I thought about using heavy duty snaps (in retrospect I probably would do that if ever doing this again) but I had a bad costume malfunction incident once, where I breathed and a snap unsnapped, leaving me a one-handed dancer while I held my skirt on. It was a stressful time. So clasps it was. I sewed two since I had such a wide waistband. Yay my beautiful skirt is complete!
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| Look at that beautiful spinny skirt! *very wrinkled* |
I think I'll include my apron-making in my next post since this one is shaping up to be a novel already. Until next time!
